Hi, quick question...

I started out writing this like how the first European explorers would describe a foreign country they landed on. Some grand tirade with endless spouts of self-compliments. I thought it'd be a swell idea to portray me, an 18 year old underachiever and his first full-time job to Marco Polo and his discovery of the Silk Trade Road:

"Joe Nevin, the inaugural good-Samaritan extraordinaire - helping kids in 27 countries around the world, including here in Australia become self sufficient and independent so they can stand on their own two feet - just like you and I!"*

Give me a picture; standing tall and proud on a plateau, clad in Victorian explorer attire in a dry arizonian environment with a plethora of young African children staring religiously toward me. Now add in the desert hues of orange, dirt red and the nihilistically clad children. Staring off into the distance; with a determined and hard-edged look, a look that screams "I'm going to find uncharted territory and assimilate these natives to my own culture".

I was going to continue and create an entire farce about the salesperson industry, and how salespeople will manipulate and distort facts just for quite a bit of cash. For those thinking it, I know, wordplay and dispensing entertaining half-truths are two traits I modestly possess. But then I thought against it. Despite the fact that I was like a mosquito on a hot summers day to the everyday civilians in transit boarding trains, I believe that some good might have actually come from it.

Before we even start this deconstruction of my most interesting month, I'd like to warm things up by reminding everyone what a hustler is from the most credible Urban Dictionary:

"People who are forced to use their Brains to make it in this world... Also they can be so sly that they can sell you stuff you don't need".

Now the lightbulbs start shining and many of you will recall an unfortunate day in transit to/from a regular train station where there was this well dressed, slightly over-confident, over-exhuberant person trying to catch your attention and berate you with facts about some society or charity. I was one of them.

Let's face it, I was the biggest hustler. I hustled harder than Jay-Z back in his dope business, harder than those guys with window wipers and buckets filled with soapy water that stop in front of your stationary car on a busy highway to meticulously clean your car window. You call out your futile attempts of refusal and yet they still continue, plowing away with the assumption that their efforts will earn them a gold coin or two. Course, I wasn't very good at it, despite my overconfidence, but take note of the part of the definition written in bold.

I guess that gratifies myself as a true hustler: persistence. It's such an important concept it's incorporated into my then-company's own logo: Pride, Persistance (sic), Passion (which is just like being persistent, but the only thing your passionate about is scoring that last sale to hit your goals).

But point in case, I managed to garner the interests of strangers by asking obnoxiously annoying questions and or acts of attention; like the time my co-worker and I decided to re-enact a scene out of Enter the Dragon in the middle of Edgecliff Station on Wednesday noon. It's safe to say that Peter Chi has no shame. I'm straying from my point again: point is, despite all our efforts to annoy, sell and harass people, there were still those kind souls to stopped, listened and considered our very limited proposals about children and the Red Cross. Even fewer were those who stopped, listened, laughed at out attempts to build rapport and decided to give a portion of their income for the next two years to help out disadvantaged kids across third world countries.

That's proof of God's own mysterious ways.

Love, actually

It seems to me that every word I’ve written here so far is aimed to farce the daily happenings that occur within my life. I suppose it probably is, I’m so good at making fun of things, I happen to take even the most basic of thoughts out of proportion and encase into a new and shiny nature. Sort of what M&Ms do when it’s Christmas.

I believe that’s how life should be anyway. You bitch, you brood, you mope, but in the end all you do is just make a joke about it and go on. In my case, you make a few witty remarks as well. That’s how Youth in Decline begins. I’m an 18 year old that feels just too fucking old for my age. It’s fine by me though, I never wanted to be any younger; any younger in my case would just add a whole new level of idiocy to my already openly impressionable life.


The way i saw it, through the eyes of my teen self, was that the older I grew, the less retarded and flatly self-dimentional I became. Looking back with my 18 year old peripheral vision, I’m able to see all the faults and screw ups I had as a kid. I still think I’m suffering from some form of mental retardation now, but a lot less of it than say, when I was a wee 15 year old.

I’m still going to open up the gates of my past the same way in the future. One day, the 25 year old me would have an open reverie on how certain actions I did or didn’t do contribute ultimately in my stupid mindset as an 18 year old. I’d look at the very first post in my blog for that. Despite the current feedback I’ve recieved, I don’t think anybody has every decrypted the initial meaning of my meaningless jabber when the residual hermit spoke. I’m not too sure on that one actually; I’d like to believe I’ve recieved an enormous fanbase, but I guess most the intellectuals on my MSN can keep it to themselves.See, my first post was a monumental self confession: an apology to the girl i love because I was an idiot with a brain span the size of a wheet-bix grain

Because, as an amazing stroke of luck, incredulous and all. I’ve found someone perfect. Words don’t describe her, and for all of 2007 she’s held responsible as a primary catalyst to finding a person within that jumble of words that is Peter Chi. She’s changed my entire outlook on life itself. I’ve made many misconceptions, many mislead facts about life and about people – just pure stupidity and a heightened ego when I look back. She’s changed all that.

There’s so much more to it than just what plainly seems like an 18 year old who is very, very whipped. But put it this way, under this asshole clown suit that people see but don’t see further beyond that, there’s a completely different entity. It’s a strange feeling when you wake up in the morning with a phone call, and you know that someone knows exactly how you’re feeling or wanting to know how well you’ve slept. Then there’s the comfortability. The accredited knowledge that when she’s around, you’re 100% Peter Chi. No fucking around, no need to play games and no fancy ploys. Just pure, unaldulterated me.

Sure one day I might open up my past, have a distant but nostalgic feeling of what it was like to be 18 again. The moments of triumphs, the excessively delusional self-confidence. You, the reader, you will see it again. You’re not going to see Peter Chi without his often blunt veracity, and his excessive need to reassert himself. You will have to because I won't let myself show that side of me. I won’t show you what i fear most. I’ll make you laugh, but I’ll never be entirely comfortable.

But that’s okay. You get to see what you need to. I’ve got someone to show those things too close to bear to. So if you the reader, happen to be Cathy, you know what to do.Give me a smile, because that's all i want.Being apart from you has made me realise how truly dependent i am with you. A public confession. Everybody else, what didn't you know?

Maybe we’ll be reading this together when we’re both 25. I have optimism, I can dream. But in typical fashion, i'm going to end it quoting a piece of western culture.
You're my wonderwall Cathy.

'All animals are equal, some more equal than others'

Kerry Packer was worth $6.5 Billion AUD when he died. Before John D. Rockerfeller died, he was the first American man to be called a billionaire. Peter Chi is 18 years old and is worth a net total of about $5000 give, or take. Peter Chi doesn't even have life insurance, let alone a savings fund.

So what does Australia's biggest media tycoon, and the State's first oil entrepreneur have in common with the self-described witty and charming nobody?

Nothing. I just wanted to put my name in retrospect to two of the biggest money farmers of our time. No delusions of grandeur and fortune here. Just an introspect with a very vague outlook toward the future.

With so much going on in the world at times like this - the influx of information at rates faster than we could actually fathom or register in one lifetime, the cresses of modern society expecting everything from everyone. Slowly but surely, human lifestyle won't be about survival, it won't be about natural selection; Darwin's done his papers, and now it's outdated and made redundant. Human life as we know it, will be centred among the ultimate strive of perfection. The standards of living of life rises to an incredible degree; take a leap back to the 1700s where personal hygiene was spartan and primitive. Jump to 1970s, you've got your first television set, pop to 2008 where gigantic conglomerates Sony and Toshiba battle it out for the next biggest deal since the VCR. Big Sexy Blu-Ray versus the Bad-ass that is HD-DVD.

See, we live in a world where the system is the fast lane. At least that's what this collectively cool cucumber surmises. Hear about the story of the guy who made $17 million in fifteen minutes? All he did was watch the stocks of oil fluctuate, click a few buttons, and in fifteen minutes, he showcased his brand new Ferrari garage.

Ha! Did i say we lived in the fast lane? I'm sorry, that only applies for the societal elite who've actually accrued that massive amount of money, enough money to power a small third world country and sponsor those third world Kenyan children to become Olympic Athletes. There's all those greens floating on a non-existent plane. The rich will get richer, but for everyone who flies economy class, tough luck son.

So where does Peter Chi fit into the grand scheme of life? He's drowning in the pool of abstinence and apathy along with every John Doe, and Joe Smith who wants to get anywhere past a mortgage repayment. What he wants? Nothing really. Maybe to have a small share of Mister seven-teen-minute-oil-baron-billionaire. So the fact of the matter is that, evidently these stories of quick earned success may be a proven and successful motivator of working hard, of being intuitive, knowledgeable, and squillions of other factors.

Either way, I'm hungry for my piece of the corporate pie.